Alistair Banks Griffin’s Top Ten Films of All Time

Have you ever wondered what are the films that inspire the next generation of filmmakers? As part of our monthly IONCINEPHILE profile (read here), we ask the filmmaker the incredibly arduous task of identifying their top ten list of all time favorite films. This April/May we profile Alistair Banks Griffin who will see his debut feature, Two Gates of Sleep have its world premiere within the sidebar section of the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. Look for this Director’s Fortnight selected film to show screen during the Fall film festival season. Here’s his top 10 list as of April 2010. 

A Journey That Wasn’t (2006) 21mins. – Pierre Huyghe
“Huyghe’s film work seems to be commenting on capacity of cinema to shape memory and draw direct connections to all aesthetic mediums. Here he takes the glacial topography of an island near Antarctica, translates the data to flashing binary code, then sets up a light to lure rare penguins towards it with this ‘landscape language’. This whole episode was then re-staged in Central Park in black ice where it was filmed with a live audience who came there in the dark. It is very hard to describe what it is, but for me the film evoked all that is special about the medium, conceptual or otherwise.”

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) – Terry Gilliam
“Munchausen was one the first film that I saw as a young boy that made me aware of “cinema”. Gilliam’s craftsmanship and style at that period of his career was virtually unparelled. In today’s landscape, it boggles the mind that a film like this could have ever been made.”

Au hasard Balthazar (1966) – Robert Bresson
“Bresson’s themes and storytelling always seems to be about the struggle between the etherial and the blunt physical, usually with the physical winning out. Bresson chose to shoot the film entirely with a single 50mm lens and at eye height because he felt this most closely represented how humans see the world. This film still crushes me every time I see it.”

Heat (1995) – Michael Mann
“It may be because it comes on TV so often, but I find myself watching this film over and over. I love the idea about making a bank heist movie that is actually about the delicateness of family. Depicting an equal dichotomy of the criminals and the crime-fighters, Mann further complicates the lines by showing evil getting the better of evil while all the time rooting for all sides. The action sequences are some of the best ever done. There are very few studio directors right now pushing the limits as much as Mann.”

Lessons of Darkness (1992) – Werner Herzog
“Fire, blood, sky, oil, Herzog. There is nothing more epic.”

Los Muertos (2004) – Lisandro Alonso
“From its stunningly brilliant, technical, horror opening to its insanely long empty frames of muddy river, there are very few films you can get lost in as much as this. Los Muertos changed a good deal of things for me about what could still be achieved in cinema.”

Manhatta (1921) – Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler
“Arguably the first American avant-garde film, Manhatta is an incredible work in that what it is documenting (a day in New York) evokes something so much larger through its strict formalism. Strand (a photographer) & Sheeler (a painter) understood precisely how to place the camera in order to shift the imagery from the mundane to sublime, essentially shooting Manhattan as a landscape film. Manhatta is grossly overlooked for its influence on modern cinema.”

The Mirror (1975) – Andrei Tarkovsky
“The Mirror comes about as close as any work of art to quantifying nostalgia. It evokes everything essential about creating memory, time and space in an artistic medium. It also has one of the most exquisite and technically brilliant shots of all time of a burning barn during a rainstorm.”

Mother and Son (1997) – Aleksandr Sokurov
“This is close to being one of the most painterly films ever made. Minimalist Russian landscapes shot through warped and stained glass all lead to this nearly unbearable transcendental beauty and sadness that builds with every shot and sound. Particularly exciting is when a modern car accidentally drives through the frame during the films’ climax. The quintessential film about life and death.”

Red Desert (1964) – Michelangelo Antonioni
“Red Desert melds the psychic mindset, color and landscape as some modernist/baroque nightmare. Here Antonioni does what he does best in never really pinning down exactly what his characters are doing or even what he as a director is trying to say, but what he evokes through his sound and mis-en-sene (and Vitti’s presence) approaches a feeling of dream-life when watching it. RD is always on in the background when I am writing.”